WI: Confederates win at Chattanooga

Minty_Fresh

Banned
This is a steep challenge, as the Battle of Chattanooga was probably too late for the campaign to be saved for Bragg's army.

However, an interesting POD might be the Union attempt to open up their supply lines. If it fails, it could be a disaster and cause them to have to retreat from the city. OTL saw the attack of Hazen's brigade, followed up by Turchin's brigade, seize a spot on the south side of the Tennessee River. This was to coincide with reinforcements under Joe Hooker marching from Bridgeport to the valley between Lookout and Raccoon Mountains.

Bragg saw this and told Longstreet to crush the Union forces on the wrong side of the river who allowed supplies to move into Chattanooga by opening up the Tennessee River to Union naval resupply, breaking the siege. Longstreet hesitated, however, believing that Hooker was going to march around the army and surround his position. He also didn't like taking orders from Bragg. By the time he actually did attack, he did so at night, at Wauhatchie, and the fight was inconclusive and rather pointless, and included Hooker's reinforcing forces. Had he attacked immediately as ordered with his full Corps, against two Union brigades, is it possible that the Union forces would have been crushed and the Tennessee River kept closed by the time that Hooker arrived?

Any other ideas to allow a Rebel victory at Chattanooga?
 
Replace Bragg. At this point most of his subordinates hated him. They even signed a petition demanding that Davis remove Bragg after his failure to follow up his victory at Chickamuaga, and push the Army of the Cumberland out of Chattanooga.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Replace Bragg. At this point most of his subordinates hated him. They even signed a petition demanding that Davis remove Bragg after his failure to follow up his victory at Chickamuaga, and push the Army of the Cumberland out of Chattanooga.

Pretty much this. The Chattanooga campaign is absurd. It seems as if the rebels were actually trying to lose it. I agree that if Bragg had been replaced by Longstreet, their efforts would have been considerably better. The commanders would have been more motivated and communication between the different corps and division leaders would have been much better. Perhaps more importantly, the utterly foolish measure of sending two divisions off to East Tennessee in a meaningless effort to mess with Burnside around Knoxville never would have happened (IOTL, it was done basically to separate Longstreet and Bragg from one another), giving the Confederate another 15,000 men or so to play around with.

You also have the simple fact that Breckinridge (a man I deeply admire, as many longtime posters here know) made a crucial error in siting his fortifications on Missionary Ridge on the actual crest of the ridge, rather than the "military" crest, a technical error which allowed attacking Union troops to have shelter from fire at the base of the ridge. Breckinridge was a good leader of troops, perhaps the outstanding political general of the war, but hardly a trained engineer. Had the command structure of the army been better, some engineers would have pointed out the problem and it would have been quickly corrected. Again, this lack of oversight can be attributed to Bragg's corrosive impact on the army.

And, as pointed out in the OP, simply doing better in the efforts to keep the supply lines into Chattanooga closed would probably have forced the Army of the Cumberland to abandon the city. This would have been both an actual military achievement of no small order and a significant morale booster for the Confederates at what was otherwise a pretty gloomy time in the war for them.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Bragg as a commander was obviously a bad idea. He was a competent divisional commander and a passable corps commander, and he was a very good at training troops and instilling discipline. He was also, however, an asshole, who fought with just about everyone possible from his days as a junior officer who complained about his superiors and was almost assassinated by enlisted men on multiple occasions, to his seemingly herculean efforts to purge his command of anyone who looked at him funny.

That being said, the moment the Confederates lost the Chattanooga campaign for good was the moment where Longstreet disobeyed orders and did not counterattack at Brown's Ferry before the arrival of Hooker. That indecision cost them the battle, and the indecision to attack Hooker's unprotected, unentrenched troops who ridiculously had their wagons in front of their bivouac at Wauhatchie (which famously led to the mule stampede and the "breveted horses" story) at night rather than a few hours earlier when force coordination was possible, cost them any chance to re-close the Tennessee River. Longstreet in command would not have been much better.

As it has been said, the failure to use the military crest on Missionary Ridge was a disaster. However, by that point, the Confederates had been demoralized for over a month with rations almost as irregular and bad as the Army of the Cumberland's while under siege, as well as miserable camp conditions on a wet and cold mountain. I don't think they would hold up under charge any better on the military crest, but the collapse would not be as easy.

Perhaps the best chance would be for Rosecrans to utterly lose his nerve rather than just become indecisive and useless, and order a retreat from Chattanooga while Forrest was still with the Army of Tennessee. His raiders were wreaking havoc on the supply lines in East Central Tennessee and crushing communication and resupply efforts, and it was only once Sherman started moving East that Confederate Cavalry stopped harassing the lines between Nashville and Chattanooga and turned their attention elsewhere. If Rosecrans strung his forces out on the march north through the one existing supply line, over those terrible roads and mountains, Bragg could have destroyed him piecemeal and had a plan to do so in such scenario that involved Cleburne crossing the Tennessee River as soon as there was a withdrawal and force marching up the easier roads east of Chattanooga and piercing the column while the rest of the Army advances north and bags whatever they can.
 

EMTSATX

Banned
@Anaxagoras, I was waiting for your response as I think you're the board expert on the Chattanooga-Atlanta campaign.

I agree with you on Breckenridge. I would Like to see a TL where he is the President of the Confederacy (I know he was from KY making that hard, but not ASB). I have been lucky enough to visit the Chattanooga battlefield and wondered how the CSA lost that one. As an aside there is a really cool Hotel in downtown Chattanooga, that is really cool civil war themed. It is pricey, I forget it's name but if anyone has a interest, PM me and I will have my wife dig it out of our scrap book.
 
I think it partially depends on how you define a win at Chattanooga. Like, if the Army of the Tennessee is still on the West bank of the Mississippi in Fall 1863, what kind of reinforcements can Rosecrans get to lift the siege and drive off the Confederates? Obviously a very different battle than OTL, but U.S. Grant and his army weigh pretty heavily on the Union side of the scales.
 

ben0628

Banned
This is a steep challenge, as the Battle of Chattanooga was probably too late for the campaign to be saved for Bragg's army.

However, an interesting POD might be the Union attempt to open up their supply lines. If it fails, it could be a disaster and cause them to have to retreat from the city. OTL saw the attack of Hazen's brigade, followed up by Turchin's brigade, seize a spot on the south side of the Tennessee River. This was to coincide with reinforcements under Joe Hooker marching from Bridgeport to the valley between Lookout and Raccoon Mountains.

Bragg saw this and told Longstreet to crush the Union forces on the wrong side of the river who allowed supplies to move into Chattanooga by opening up the Tennessee River to Union naval resupply, breaking the siege. Longstreet hesitated, however, believing that Hooker was going to march around the army and surround his position. He also didn't like taking orders from Bragg. By the time he actually did attack, he did so at night, at Wauhatchie, and the fight was inconclusive and rather pointless, and included Hooker's reinforcing forces. Had he attacked immediately as ordered with his full Corps, against two Union brigades, is it possible that the Union forces would have been crushed and the Tennessee River kept closed by the time that Hooker arrived?

Any other ideas to allow a Rebel victory at Chattanooga?


I asked this question several months ago. Personally, I feel that if your goal is to destroy the army of the Cumberland, an even more successful Confederate victory at Chickamauga would be easier to accomplish than surrounding an entire Union army and successfully besieging it into submission while also having to deal with Union forces outside the city.

Somehow get George Thomas to die during the battle before he can form up his army on horseshoe ridge, and you could seriously see a huge disaster if no other Union general could take control of the situation quickly.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
I asked this question several months ago. Personally, I feel that if your goal is to destroy the army of the Cumberland, an even more successful Confederate victory at Chickamauga would be easier to accomplish than surrounding an entire Union army and successfully besieging it into submission while also having to deal with Union forces outside the city.

Somehow get George Thomas to die during the battle before he can form up his army on horseshoe ridge, and you could seriously see a huge disaster if no other Union general could take control of the situation quickly.
An interesting POD for that might be to have the Army of the Cumberland ban their troops from buying repeater rifles in the spring of 1863. There were concerns about ammunition availability and accuracy/reliability of the weapons themselves, but in general, AoC had many regiments who decided to buy repeaters on their own while on furlough or who had a benefactor buy one for them.

During Chickamauga, these weapons might have helped save the army. Wilder's Spencer-armed Brigade early on in the battle were crucial to preventing the engagement from starting much nastier for the Union, and the 21st Ohio's stand during the retreat using Colt Rifles, in which they shot over 43K rounds, played a big role in Thomas's success. This isn't a big POD, but it would be interesting to see how Chickamauga would have ended without repeater rifles being in use.
 
Have a more forceful counterattack at Brown's Ferry by Longstreet, or somehow disrupt the Union's operation to cross the river for several days (Grant fell off his horse at this time in OTL, heavy rains could've flooded the river, etc....). An online resource I read stated that the Union force besieged in the city was about a day or two away from starvation, so going a week or so without the Cracker Line will force them to surrender.
 

ben0628

Banned
Have a more forceful counterattack at Brown's Ferry by Longstreet, or somehow disrupt the Union's operation to cross the river for several days (Grant fell off his horse at this time in OTL, heavy rains could've flooded the river, etc....). An online resource I read stated that the Union force besieged in the city was about a day or two away from starvation, so going a week or so without the Cracker Line will force them to surrender.

Or force them to attempt a break out. Which they might succeed at doing.
 
Or force them to attempt a break out. Which they might succeed at doing.

That doesn't strike me as likely. The Army of the Cumberland was surrounded on all sides by either the Confederates or the river. Bragg's forces were roughly equally in number to them (IIRC they had a few thousand more), were on the high ground, and the Union troops would be very hungry by the time such a breakout attempt occurs. If their ammunition supplies matched there food supplies, then that makes the situation even worse for them.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
Or force them to attempt a break out. Which they might succeed at doing.
They'd be attacking on a narrow front facing more Confederates than they would be a month later without Sherman and Hooker's commands, which were 3 more corps on the battlefield. The Confederate position was bad because of the failure to properly entrench on the military crest, but they would have troops to reinforce the central position at Missionary Ridge, and to counterattack on the flanks.

OTL, Bragg was attacked while he had Cleburne fending off Sherman's attacks on the far right flank, and had his entire left flank gone after Hooker seized Lookout Mountain. The Confederate defense was a mess and disorganization was rife as the attempt to deal with Hooker was scrambled. In this scenario, the AoC would be attacking across the Tennessee River while Longstreet was still in position and before their troops had been resupplied. The rifle pits might be taken, but the flanks would be hammered and caved in even if the central attack had the success that it did OTL, which it would not.

A breakout attempt would be either an attack to open up the Tennessee River, or a miserable retreat towards Nashville. A frontal attack across the River was not considered by Rosecrans or Thomas before Grant took command. The landing at Brown's Ferry needed to succeed, and it did.
 
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